QUIROGA: a MEXICAN MUNICIPIO — BRANT) 



63 



ment of entendencies in 1786-87. Among the 

 resultant Relaciones Geograficas, censuses, etc., 

 we have not located anything pertaining to 

 Cocupao-QuLroga. Probably there is something 

 in the great 1792-94 (essentially 1793) census 

 ordered by the viceroy Revilla Gigedo, but we did 

 not examine the pertinent documents in the 

 archives. It was from this census that Humboldt 

 (1811) derived much of his information on New 

 Spain. The first exact figures we find in the 

 statistical analysis of Michoacdn in 1822 by 

 Martinez de Lejarza (1824), who gives San Diego 

 Cocupao (with the same implied area as that 

 covered by VUlasenor) a population of 2,752 

 (table 2). The considerable growth of Cocupao 

 in population and in importance is supported by 

 the facts that in 1742 it was smaller in population 

 than Tzintzuntzan and was a dependency of that 

 town, while ia 1822 Cocupao had the largest popu- 

 lation of any community in the northern half of 

 the Pdtzcuaro Basin and as early as 1820-23 was 

 the seat of municipal government for the area 

 now embraced in the municipio of Qunoga. 



Table 2.— Population, 174^ and 1822 



Table 3. — Population, 1822-79 



1 Not given. 



POPULATION 1822-79 



During the difficult and often anarchic period 

 from the revolution against Spain until the Paz 

 Porfiriana which began in the late 1870's, there 

 were only a few estimates of population of the 

 village, the municipality, and the parish. These 

 estimates are often contradictory and often mani- 

 festly very erroneous. For whatever value they 

 may possess, we present the estimates in table 3. 

 It will be noted that the estimates of 1868 and 

 1879 are termed censuses. These figures were 

 provided by the municipal authorities on the basis 

 of information from the civil register and from the 

 chiefs of blocks, dependent pueblos, and ranchos, 

 and cannot be considered as formal censuses. 

 This is true also for the so-called censuses of 1882 

 and 1889. 



' Including ranchos. 



• On May 1-8. 1874, Tzintzuntzan and its dependencies were attached to 

 the municipio of Quiroga and remained a part of Quiroga until Sept. 19-24, 

 1930. 



POPULATION 1882-1945 



In 1882 there was founded the Federal Direccion 

 General de Estadlstica within the ministry of 

 development (Fomento), and after that date there 

 was available advice and supervision from Mexico 

 City. This Federal census bureau, after various 

 changes in name and departmental location, re- 

 sumed the original title of Direccion General de 

 Estadlstica in 1923, and has been a dependency 

 of the Secretaria de la Economia Nacional since 

 1933. The first national census was taken in 

 1895, which was followed by others in 1900, 1910, 

 1921, 1930, and 1940. These various national 

 censuses vary greatly in the subjects censused 

 and the quaUty of the work. The 1895 census 

 returns were pubhshed by states and constituent 

 districts, therefore data on the municipalities are 

 lacking. The returns of the 1910 census were 

 published in abbreviated form in 1918-20. The 

 census scheduled for 1920 was held in 1921, and 

 the volume on Michoacdn was not published until 

 1927. This census is suspected of having been 

 tampered with poHtically and padded. The more 

 recent censuses are great improvements over all 

 earlier censuses. Preliminary to a number of 

 population censuses there were made (1909, 

 1921, 1929, 1939, and earher years) censuses of 

 houses and inhabitants that provide some gross 

 population figures. In table 4 are given figures 

 from the census of 1882 to our census of 1945. 



An inspection of the figures from 1822 to date 

 reveals several presumptive facts. The gain from 

 1822 to 1861 is not large, but it is reasonable con- 

 sidering the poor health conditions and the civil 

 wars that obtained during that period. The great 

 decline from 1861 to 1868 probably represents the 

 difference between a rounded estimate for 1861 

 and a more exact count in 1868, and the losses 

 resultant from the civil wars and the French In- 

 tervention of the 1860's. Most of the gain regis- 



